Learned Shrinkage Approach for Low-Dose Reconstruction in Computed Tomography

We propose a direct nonlinear reconstruction algorithm for Computed Tomography (CT), designed to handle low-dose measurements. It involves the filtered back-projection and adaptive nonlinear filtering in both the projection and the image domains. The filter is an extension of the learned shrinkage m...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Joseph Shtok, Michael Elad, Michael Zibulevsky
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Wiley 2013-01-01
Series:International Journal of Biomedical Imaging
Online Access:http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2013/609274
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:We propose a direct nonlinear reconstruction algorithm for Computed Tomography (CT), designed to handle low-dose measurements. It involves the filtered back-projection and adaptive nonlinear filtering in both the projection and the image domains. The filter is an extension of the learned shrinkage method by Hel-Or and Shaked to the case of indirect observations. The shrinkage functions are learned using a training set of reference CT images. The optimization is performed with respect to an error functional in the image domain that combines the mean square error with a gradient-based penalty, promoting image sharpness. Our numerical simulations indicate that the proposed algorithm can manage well with noisy measurements, allowing a dose reduction by a factor of 4, while reducing noise and streak artifacts in the FBP reconstruction, comparable to the performance of a statistically based iterative algorithm.
ISSN:1687-4188
1687-4196